


A Myth of Devotion

by Brigand, FlowerCrownOfPoppy



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Any additional tags would constitute major spoilers, Chaotic evil cosmic god strikes bargains with its chosen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 06:23:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16969350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigand/pseuds/Brigand, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlowerCrownOfPoppy/pseuds/FlowerCrownOfPoppy
Summary: For a moment he thinks maybe they’ve slipped into the In-Between into another time, just like the King in Yellow when he’s out to collect, one where Reynauld comes home from the crusades and holds his grown boy and sunburned wife close and tells them that he’s better now, but he smiles instead and he knows that this one’s his.Alternate ending where Reynauld is taken by the Heart in the expedition to the final dungeon. RP adaption.





	1. i. Denial

Night's fallen over the barracks in Anchester since they've made their way back, but Dismas is still sitting on his bunk, white noise in his head and his chest and his feet.

He was certain he wouldn’t make it to thirty when he was young, and every year was just cheating death since then – but now he realizes he wasn’t cheating anyone or anything. The house always collects; whoever’s laughing over him has come to collect, and he knows everyone’s in the taverns now, celebrating when they were all respect and _veneration_ when they were passing Reynauld’s corpse between them, preparing him for his final rites, but he doesn’t blame them. What was another body for the Flame, anyway? - and he gags because he can remember what it was when he knew who’d died but not so well, who’d lived but not so well, and it was all the same to him, but this time the pyre is fueled with the corpse of his beloved and he’s _sick_ that it’s all the same.

There’s a ruby in his pocket – the first and only time he’s stolen since he’s gotten here, imagine that – because he knows he likes them, they’re the most beloved gemstone according to the good book or whatever the fuck. He was waiting until after the heir’s errands, when Anchester could be free to finally stop paying for the sins of someone old and sick and stupid and unbelievably broken who shouldn’t have been in the underground in the first place, but now he realizes it wasn’t for anything.

A lifetime of taking things that weren’t his, and he imagines Reynauld wasn’t any different.

He’s holding the ruby up, but there’s no light for it to reflect. He laughs, “you forgot something, old boy,” and he’s crying now but he can’t let anyone see him like this.

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, the way he doesn't know what he waits for whenever anyone leaves him like they all do, and so he sits, and drinks, and waits.

_

The world is lonely, but the bounty hunter has always preferred it that way.

He never gave his name – though he lent his axe for a price – and no one notices when he slips out of the tavern door.

They're all too punch-drunk or actually drunk to care. Their world is warm light and mead and, as far as the bounty hunter's concerned, false victories. None of them knew the truth. None of them had seen the heart of the world.

He wasn't in a hurry to tell them, either.

He settles for stalking the streets of Anchester – ruined, rebuilt, and ruined again as they were. They would undoubtedly persevere in time. He didn't give a shit. He had no intentions of staying longer than a fortnight. The deed was done, his contract was fulfilled; it was time to move on to new prey, new prospects. His mind wanders, his feet bringing him to the cobblestone seclusion of Anchester's barracks.

The greenhorns in the taverns crow, fancying themselves written as living legends when they never came close to touching the heart. All he wants is sleep.

It would be maudlin to compare the barracks to a tomb – but the stagnant air is undoubtedly tomblike. The merriment quiets to a murmur in the presence of a man shrouded in the barrack's shadows. His footsteps are the loudest sound here until he gives pause.

There it is. A restrained sniffle, a muffled half sob. Someone else was in here and likely in the middle of some highly personal display of emotion. He knows how to mind his own business and makes to remove the layers of padding he called armor until he glimpses a familiar head of hair-

The highwayman.

The only other living soul that had witnessed the monstrous heart of the world. The bounty hunter had never believed in ultimate good or evil despite the prattling of the abbey, but – that thing. No gray area to be had, no quarter. It was evil.

And he'd killed it with an axe. So much for gods and devils.

He isn't sure what to say. There's a mutual respect, awkward and tenuous as it is, and the bounty hunter respects him enough not to comment on his state of vulnerability – so he steps forward and makes himself known when he sits down on his bunk, pulling off his gloves without haste. He figures either the highwayman would talk first, or they'd pass the moment in silence – hell if he would say anything, if he could help it.

Either was fine with him.

_

Dismas freezes, but it’s already too late. The bounty hunter’s here, whether he likes it or not, and he’s taking his gloves off slow which would mean nothing if anyone else did the same – but it speaks.

Only now does he realize how curious it is that they’ve both been through the same trial by fire and he’s seen him from the periphery of his life the whole way through, sitting on opposite ends of the tavern with opposite men, seeing his helm on the sill of the whorehouse window, his hook through the game in the kitchens. This man he’s seen a dozen times in passing, who he trusted with his life in the mouth of hell – who he’d trusted with Reynauld’s life.

A hundred lives intersecting with his own and he’s shied away from each and every one of them – a blind old horse, waiting patiently to be taken to the factory. No more useful now than if he had been rendered down and taken apart for salvage.

He’s clearing his throat, but there’s nothing that can be done about red-rimmed eyes or the smell of bad whiskey, and he briefly entertains the idea that the man is here to collect – no small bounty would be on his head back in London, even now – but he realizes that he’s all but forgotten to the world outside wherever this was, and he’s more afraid of being _forgotten_ than being crushed to death, he thinks-

“I’m alright, don’t you know. If it’s sleep you want, you won’t find it here, not when I’m having a fit.” He laughs again, but it cracks down the middle, and he reckons it’s no use pretending to have any dignity – not here, not now, so he says something honest instead.

“Valhalla, or Paradise, or – whatever name it goes by where you’re from-“ he doesn’t say _heaven_ , because it’ll make him choke- “you believe in any of that?” _You think any of us will rest_? He doesn’t say it. He drinks because his eyes are hidden when he tips back the flask.

_

He’s thrown by the question, if he doesn’t show it.

He's never been one to wax philosophical but he watches each man and woman deal with it how they think will make it go away and it’s uglier than if they had stayed put where they were – so he's never considered what comes after and doesn't plan to now.

Still. His job is to steal, threaten, bribe, and murder, but not so much to lie. He sees no reason to lie now.

"No," he says. His voice is rasped at the edges and just as flat as it is deep.

The helmet is pulled off with care and placed on the bed – now they’re both exposed, not quite eye to eye but close enough, though if Dismas were to brave a closer look at his face he wouldn't find it much more readable than his tone; his expression could just as well be hewn from stone. He's not looking too closely at the other man, removing his own trappings as it were any other night. It's not until the bandolier and belt are both set aside that he speaks again.

"I don't believe there's anything after death. Just darkness." He’s distant, but no fool. He knows who the man's tears are shed for – how close they'd been he'd never pried into, though if he had to wager a guess based on the highwayman's reaction-

He was never good with words. He has no idea if he's the sort to draw solace from them or find them unnecessary. Chances were that a wine in hand would help him more than the milk of human kindness.

_

Dismas laughs, he thinks.

 _Of course,_ and he didn’t take the bounty hunter to be a man of God in the first place, but it takes all the breath out of him, and Dismas imagines this is what it’s like on the other end when he’s spinning his ugly jokes at campfires, _how many adventurers does it take to die in a pit? Anyone game to guess_? - but there’s no joke, and no one’s laughing – except he is, right now, with the ruby in hand. 

“ _Useless_ old man – didn’t bother leaving anything behind to identify him outside of the hamlet! Wife and child, all alone! What will the parish priest think of him now?” – he’s laughing so hard there are tears, or is it the other way around? He’s hysterical, and he wonders why it’s taken so long to be afflicted. He doesn’t feel ashamed about sounding like a dying animal – he _is_ a dying animal, and he’d like to get away, far away, where not even the man of the estate could see him. Goddamned omnipotent wanker.

He’s still laughing when he tips back the flask, and it makes him cough, lungs on fire – if he stops talking, it’ll go quiet, and he can’t have that, and the man’s taken his helmet off and he needs to know what he looks like, _more man than beast or more beast than man_? But if he looks, he’ll know he’s dying, and he can’t have that.

“Tell me you’ll say something when they put him in the ground,” Dismas says, _anything_ , because he sure as hell can’t.

He’s out of whiskey. He fishes out a tin of tobacco, but his hands are shaking so badly he can barely fill the pipe.

_

He may not know what to say but it serves him just as well – the man needs to make noise, he appreciates the noise. It’s more tolerable than the joyous cacophony of the tavern – it grounds him.

"I will." He doesn't make promises and he doesn't owe anyone who hasn't put down coin beforehand, and yet. But who for? The highwayman? The crusader – fuck, he can’t even remember their names. He's not accustomed to acting on impulse – this must have been something he said on impulse. 

_Just this once,_ he thinks. _Don't make it a habit._

Removing the armor is meditative. He pulls off the layers of leather and scale mail that might as well serve as a second skin methodically, discipline even in this. The air chills him, making the hair rise on his forearms.

He'd been called handsome once, a long time ago – he can't remember by who or when – and he's since accrued numerous scars; vanity was never a concern. The limited light hits on strong jaw covered in stubble and the sharpness of his eyes; he wonders what it says that he would leave himself so exposed. It says even more that he'd turn his back to place his armor in the lone chest at the foot of the bunk, if only for a few seconds.

"My name is Tardif," he says, apropos of nothing. He doesn't wait for a response before he kicks off his boots, placing them neatly against the side of the bed. He's surprisingly orderly for a contract killer.

_

Dismas hears it out loud when the man says it, but he hears it a second time in his head.

”My name is Tardif,” at first, but then it cascades into more, and more-

” _My name is Baldwin, good soldier_.” A king stands before him. Petals fall to the floor.

“My name is _Paracelsus, Junia, Harcourt, Titian, Boudica, William, Audrey, Quincarnon, Ansgotamanialhazredsarmentiosmondmissandeibarristanjosephinemargaret-_

Then darkness as he’s taken back to a time when he’s younger and not in love, staring at the back of the man in the bunk three feet to his right. 

“ _I can’t call you old boy forever. What’s your name_?”

“No more names,” he says, “it’s too late for names,” and it’s the first time the hunter’s been out of armor where anyone could see him, probably even the whores at the Yellow Hand – he reckons they’re both out of armor now, but under layers and layers of trappings was just a man where Tardif’s sitting; where Dismas is sitting, nothing. 

“You – we need to sleep.” He drops the pipe, and he can’t help but feel like he’s making the same mistakes he’s always made – waiting until later because there would always be time then, except for when there isn’t, and poor man Tardif’s been through the fire all the same, why couldn’t he feel it?-

He can hear him shuffling, making to put his weapons into his trunk and get ready for bed on a night for celebration, and he wonders if he’s made himself scarce in his own heart the way he’s made himself scarce on the hamlet. Dismas wishes he could have done the same.

_What’s your name? What’s your name? What’s your name?_

_

 _What's your name? What's your_ -

Name. Something forms on Reynauld's lips, though no sound comes out. Blood runs in leaching rivulets from his nose. 

The Heart looms, its limbs already having burrowed past the plate mail that was supposed to be untarnished, supposed to be _unbreakable _, and then Reynauld says _I love y-___

__There is a visceral noise, something tearing and something wet. The world runs red, red as the setting sun-_ _

__The sun is setting. London's smoggy skyline turns ruddy – up above, the gray-red of industrialization. Somewhere far off, a bell rings the hour. Dismas is in boy’s clothes, secondhand and horribly itchy. The streets are damp from recent rainfall, cold and unclean and familiar._ _

__But there's something else here._ _

A man is watching him from the corner of the street and his face is familiar – someone Dismas has seen in a dream about a dream. There's a smile on his face, though his eyes are sad. That's all to be seen before a passing carriage swallows his silhouette, and then he's passing down the street out of sight. 

_ 

It’s all Dismas can do not to scream, but he’s a young boy again, and old man Hilford and his perfumed ilk are barreling down the cobblestone on a familiar thoroughfare - _Regent Street_ \- baying for his blood. In one ungloved hand there’s enough shillings to feed him and mum for _days,_ and it’s not like Hilford needs it – fat pig that he is – so he takes off running, rainwater filling the torn soles of his boots – wait until Tom Dacre hears what he’s gotten just off one wallet, then he’ll concede that– 

_There he is again_ , but to Dismas he’s just one of many strangers on the street, and if he rounds _just_ one more corner, just past the jeweler’s, he’ll be back home and ready to stash them under the sink before mum gets home- 

He’s still running, but something’s wrong. He rounds the corner again and again but soon he’s back at the end of the lane, running, and he knows he’s been running for years now, because he’s getting taller and stronger and braver. His old boots are replaced with a marginally less torn pair, then another, then another, then another that’s different from all the others – this pair is black, and _real_ leather, and isn’t torn to pieces, and at some point when he was running a familiar cloth appears on his face – white at first, then red – and the shillings have long since turned to ashes in his hand – suddenly gloved. 

Old man Hilford disappears from his mind, and now he remembers who he is again, how old he is, how old he _really_ is, because this time around he feels the locket in his hand, and he knows it’s almost time. He sticks his hand in his pocket – when the ruby appears, he makes a sharp left into the alleyway off Regent’s. 

His heart runs into his throat when he sees him in the back alley, even if he’d known. 

He isn’t as he was when he went to the Heart – his hair hasn’t yet starting graying at the edges, his beard isn’t quite as long, and Dismas knows that this was before age started to pick both of them apart. 

Before Reynauld can even say anything, Dismas is on him, hands at his throat. He thinks he’s waking up – the scene is getting more and more distant – but he realizes it’s just tears in his eyes. He only lets up so he can scream at this apparition, this ghost made manifest just to kick him when he’s down. “What the _fuck_ are you doing? _Can’t you just leave me alone_?” 

_ 

He doesn't attempt to remove the hand clutching at him and his gaze is calm despite the screaming. Dismas' voice rings even as it’s quickly swallowed by wood and stone. If anyone else heard, no one comes running. They might as well be the only two people in the world. 

The age still shows in Reynauld’s face; he's seen the world, not much of it kind, and he's no less noble for the weathering. His eyes are lit from within, as if the Light has made its home inside him. 

"What a miraculous city you come from." His gloved hand raises, hovers, as if waiting for Dismas to stop him. It almost even looks like Reynauld’s aiming for his face, but instead he settles on his shoulder. 

"No less like Anchester, a pit full of depravity and sin, yet." 

Reynauld wasn't a man who smiled often. There was nothing saccharine about their circumstances, but he'd had his moments. An occasional smile here, laughter in a blue moon. He smiles now. 

"From it came you." 

_ 

Reynauld, in his home town, far from the pit of hell in Anchester. There was some touching here and there before – in Anchester’s woods, sometimes even as brazenly in the taverns or out on the Heir’s call – one memorable time in Paracelsus’ bunk, of all places – and rarely anything other than subtext that had to be pried from his condescension, concern, rebukes – the only language Reynauld spoke from a lifetime of dogma. This is probably the only compliment he’s ever been paid, to his face without stealing it. 

It's wrong. What’s more, it’s unbelievably intrusive. 

“What have you done with him?” That’s all he can think about saying. 

He’s not hitting him anymore, not now, but he still has his back against the wall. He pulls the raw hunk of ruby from his pocket. “What is this? Do you even know what this is? What are you?” 

_ 

Reynauld's gaze dips to the ruby and lights up with familiarity. 

"Yes, of course. A cardinal gem is unmistakable to any member of the Order. I- “ 

His expression shifts without warning; whatever he's prepared to say is whisked away with his breath, quickly forgotten. 

The hand on Dismas's shoulder has weight to it – there's even a faint heat beyond the thickness of leather. It tightens suddenly, fingers digging into his coat. He's clawing for purchase while standing perfectly upright. 

"Listen to me closely," he begins – stops, begins again- "There is as much Darkness in the world as there is Light. This is how it has always been, when First Night came after First Morning. Do you understand?" 

There’s something desperate in Reynauld's tone. His eyes are nearly aglow. 

"Tell me you understand.” 

_ 

Reynauld’s never talked about the Darkness before as ever-present and something necessary. Evil, and hatred of God were unessential – they existed _to be,_ to crown entropy king, a byproduct of the Creation- 

That’s what finally tips him off. 

There is no concept of compromise in Reynauld’s doctrine. Light engulfs darkness, darkness engulfs light, and this Reynauld knows something that his would never know, could never know. 

“I don’t, I don’t understand, Reyn-“ and it’s the first time he realizes he’s even in a dream when they grasp him from under his feet – kin of Alhazred’s ‘benefactor,’ pulling taut over his eyes and ears and mouth and neck, and he knows instinctively that they’re not hands, they feel like _hands-_

Reynauld didn’t take the ruby from him, and it’s so pathetic that it breaks his heart. It’s not even the real one, not even as real as the visions conjured by the dungeons, but he didn’t take it from him and it breaks his heart. It’s in his hand when the tendrils all but throw him onto his bed into the waking world in one rapid act of violence- 

Of course. He fell asleep holding it. 

But it’s not a ruby. 

He could have sworn it was a ruby, and he knows if Tardif saw he’d swore he’d transmuted solid gold from a stone, and this one’s worth so much more than a ruby; the impossible geometry of a black trapezohedron sits in his palm. 

It’s the middle of the night, and only a few stragglers from the tavern have made for bed, and he throws it against the wall with one strangled cry knowing that night terrors are hardly out of the norm in the barracks. 

He doesn’t give a _fuck_ about trapezohedrons. Reynauld never touched one of the damned things. 

Maybe someone will find it and pocket it for themselves in the morning, Dismas doesn’t care. They’ll need the money for when they venture back to the outside on the Old Road – he’d need the money too, if the payout for purging the final Dungeon hadn’t been so enormous. He’ll drink himself to death with it. 

He can’t be in the barracks next to Reynauld’s lockbox and Reynauld’s bed and Reynauld’s everything, so he’s sitting out back behind the barracks, close enough that he can wake up for funeral rites, and he hates the idea of going to sleep where he has no control over what specters his own fucking mind will make up but he’s nodding off anyways. 

There’s no moon in the sky that night. Anchester passes the night free of its white pyre. 

_ 

Of whatever could come from sleeping outside in the cold, none of them come to him in the night, and Dismas gets a scant few hours of rest before the sun begins to pull itself from Anchester's ragged horizon. 

It isn’t yet dawn; the world is bathed in blue, the sound of boots trudging through gravel and muck drawing close. 

Tardif approaches with tobacco pipe in hand. How he manages to pull smoke with his veil drawn high and his helmet drawn down is a mystery, though smoke clearly rises from the end in curling wisps. He'd paint an ominous picture to a passing stranger, no doubt, this faceless henchman loosely holding a pipe in his fist. 

He's seen starving dogs that looked less miserable than Dismas did; not that he felt an excess of pity – he doubted the man would want that anyway – but he feels something he has no name for and has no desire to plumb the depths of. He stands a few feet away from Dismas and patiently waits for him to rouse himself. He'd intentionally made his footsteps noisy, knowing from their time on the field that he was a light sleeper. 

"It's gone," he says, once he thinks Dismas can process human speech. He sucks on the pipe for a moment through the cloth covering his mouth, giving the man – his comrade? – time to fully understand what he meant. 

_ 

He knows what the man means even when he’s hearing it in the fog of early morning. 

_Maybe he means the ruby_ , but Dismas knows he doesn’t mean the ruby, and a body doesn’t just _disappear_ but all manner of corpse-thieves have come in the night before – starving wolves attracted by the scent of carrion, haggard crones, looters from the bandit camps taking armor and the boots off a dead man’s feet – but they had been expendable. Reynauld was a fucking _hero_ , and they let his body be dragged off into the night because they’d been too fucking busy drinking and dancing on their victory pyre. 

“Are you _fucking_ -” he wheezes when he gets to his feet, “-are you fucking serious?” - and he knows he is, the man’s not one to play games, and he thought he knew what it was to be at rock bottom but this is something else, and he feels like a ring of recruits might as well be circling him and pointing and laughing at the old sodomite’s misfortune, his lover dragged and quartered on unconsecrated ground – a fate worse than death- 

There’s a crowd circling the empty pallet where the corpse had been left, and Dismas pushes his way through and almost falls to his knees, but he can’t let them see, not this crowd of fucking _ingrates_ \- 

Baldwin never made it out of the third dungeon. 

He had stayed behind to buy them time while the other three made to run – he died alone in the ruptured underbelly of the Estate, miles from the surface. Paracelsus had gone down screaming, a horde of manticores crushing her underneath the bulbous meat and calcium stalactites of their tails, swallowing her under the offal of their unmade bodies. 

There weren’t any flowers for their burial. That had always been Paracelsus’ doing, ever since she got here, ever since she had always been here, Junia, and Bigby, and Josephine, William, Amani- 

And now the barracks were overcrowded with the young and the weak, veterans thrown out of Anchester’s city limits when the heir deemed them too useless to work again, some too broken to step foot out of the sanitarium, not now, not ever again. And they celebrate, because they won’t need flowers for their burials. 

Dismas breaks and runs for the taverns, and his pockets are full of gold, and that makes him sick too – there were only three of them left to even go into the final dungeon. There was no healer alive to go with them. Junia was supposed to go with them. Junia, and Paracelsus, not some hitman he’d seen twice on the hamlet. 

Junia. Paracelsus. 

He’s going to die here, in the tavern. He’s got enough gold for his drug of choice. The barkeep would let him, too, because he knows, _all these bastards know_ \- 

Someone steps into the bar. He doesn’t want to hear it, whoever it is, whatever they want to say. It’s too late for names, so late. 

“Go ahead, laugh,” Dismas says, and he doesn’t know why. 

_ 

There's no response at first; there's only the slow, methodical dragging of feet interspersed with the wooden tap of a cane. The barkeep doesn't even raise his head, apparently too involved in the task of wiping clean another empty mug to bother. 

The man taking the seat adjacent smells faintly of the earth; sage and incense, old medicine. 

"There's nothing to laugh about, Dismas Turner." 

The voice certainly fits the face, old and wizened, though perhaps not so much older than their departed man-at-arms – what could be made of his complexion was ashy, hooded eyes, sunken deep. There was something distinct about him, the set of his shoulders tired but confident. He holds his cane tightly in one hand, running his nails over it with the same affection a warrior did his weapon. 

"No, not now, maybe – maybe later. For now, we mourn. Not a prayer in God’s mouth – blood in His lungs, something in His Heart." His sclera are the color of milk. His head sways for a moment, shoulders twitching. He doesn't move to order a drink; the bartender ignores them both. The old man squints in sympathy – perhaps more. 

"Tragedy left more questions than answers in its wake." He looks at Dismas directly now, incredibly distant in his gaze. He appears to be looking beyond him, through him, or perhaps he’s just soft in the head; it’s hard to tell. 

_ 

_Turner._ His old man took off before Dismas was born, so he’d taken Turner’s last name a few years into his apprenticeship – he’d been more of a father to him than anyone, but who would know- 

Really, who would know? 

Someone from the outside world maybe – not even Reynauld knew his last name, and Dismas is suddenly aware that such a pithy thing was buried in other words as if on purpose. And maybe a week ago he’d have the energy to give chase. 

“I don’t have time for riddles, soothsayer,” he says, and he realizes he might not have much time for anything at all, “so speak straight with me, or not at all.” 

He recoils – disgust, and maybe some fear? – some wise man from the mountains, perhaps, living as a recluse amidst the brigand camps. He certainly didn’t descend from wherever he came to give his condolences. Was there still a bounty on his head? Would anyone find peace if he were to be dragged back to London and quartered? Maybe he owes them that. 

_ 

The old man's head sways in a way reminiscent of something bovine, head bowed and shoulders hunched. 

“Time," he says, "Is made a mockery in this place. Something in your heart." There’s a moment of lucidity, the tapping of his cane stopping for a moment. "Were I to tell you more. But now I know less than I did when I began. You will go when it tells you." His body twitches – arthritis, or clairvoyance?- 

Another spasm, less violent now. “Something in your Heart.” The cane taps, his lucidity gone. 

_ 

“Drek,” Dismas says, making to stand. “I’m done taking orders from the cosmic beyond,” and he’s under no illusion that the man can’t see how pathetic that is, how it comes from a place of complete helplessness – a man stranded at sea, pretending he has a say in when he’s crushed against the rockface. A schizophrenic Atlas convinced that Zeus has given him a _calling,_ instead of a life sentence. 

He deserves nothing, and that’s a lie, because he deserves less than that, less than Hell. This is less than Hell. 

One of the recruits, damned if he knows which, pulls him to the empty pallet after he buckles, and he’s more than certain they’ve grouped together to laugh at him one last time before he goes under, but under the haze that blots out their mindless voices he knows for certain that he sees them. 

Footsteps. 

One pair, no other indents on the dirt covering the stone paving. 

Down the Old Road. Heading south, southeast- 

He’s certain he’s going to be sick. 

Someone catches him under the arm, a censer is waved under his nose, and he sees Tardif – they all know, he must be the last to know, as always- 

_Alive_. He’s alive, then. 

It’s not possible, and it makes him laugh, because it’s fucking absurd that this is the thing that makes him draw a line in the sand and say _no further_ , because how often before had he stumbled from the reanimated bones, the halfbeasts, the manticores, his _own fucking head in a bag_ , and now he can say such a thing can’t be real? Old, and stupid, and drunk, and _oh god Reynauld_ \- 

Someone carrying him somewhere where the other recruits can’t watch him make a spectacle of himself, and he wonders what happens even if Reynauld were to come back. 

Reynauld, who didn’t even know his last name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an adapted RP done over Discord with FlowerCrownOfPoppy - the writing sequence alternates, starting with me, then them, etc. where left-justified underscores indicate the writing being handed off to the other person, center-justified underscores indicating natural breaks in the storytelling. For an easier way to visualize it, I wrote for Dismas and Baldwin, they wrote Tardif and Reynauld's perspectives.
> 
> With Bear's permission for their side, and a big dose of "ahhhg words make head hurty" about my side, a lot of the original text of the RP is edited to remove redundancies and make it more suitable for straight reading rather than roleplay reading.


	2. ii. Anger

The world is swaddled in darkness; the recruits try to pull him from unconsciousness in a stream of concerned shouts and smelling salts, the sensory input like sand through a sieve. 

In that darkness, there is a beat. 

It's warm and steady and omnipotent; it's impossible to tell whether it comes from outside his head or in it. It's just as impossible to tell up from down, left from right, or to _feel_ anything at all, a limbless, motionless entity. 

A rushing sound joins the beat after a moment. It could be water, swelling and sinking – he is buoyed along in this current. He is swaddled in the heat and the quiet dark and he is home- 

_What's your name, old boy?_

_You will go when it tells you._

_Unholy foulness! I will take you with me!_

_**WAKE UP-**_

The nuns turned wartime nurses twitter anxiously – they surround him, then withdraw as if he were a rabid beast, then surround him again, a linen and syringe collective. One of them nervously paces before dashing out of the door, shouting something down the hallway. The others bring out strange instruments to poke and prod him with, testing this and that, making the sign of the Cross and hastily turning their heads to the crucifix placed upon the far wall. Someone shouts and they scatter, dashing out of the door in a whirlwind of sweeping habits and bobbing caps. 

She dresses the same as any nun, though there are wrinkles around her mouth and a sternness in her eyes that softens slightly upon the sight of him. 

"God's ears, boy," she says, "You don't look possessed to me." 

She shuts the door behind her and goes to his side, shaking her head. "Your reputation precedes you, even in this madhouse.” 

_ 

“I know,” Dismas says, and it comes out more bitter than he anticipates, so he adds “thank you,” and he imagines there’s only so often now that he’ll have the opportunity to make an embarrassment of himself in front of the recruits – not that he cares. Soon they’ll disperse, taking with them the coin ransacked from the Estate, leaving Anchester as impoverished as it ever was. 

He’s the only one not taking the footsteps in stride, and the recruits couldn’t care less if a stray body was pulled to the Estate under the guidance of a straggling necromancer – the war was done, their pockets lined with the carcass of the Estate. Damn them. 

Is he well enough to go? He’s not even well enough to walk yet. He’s leaving under the cover of night, where he’s most comfortable, still wary of an eidolon’s intervention – maybe even the heir to some extent. Poor bastard, he says, in the same space as some part of him says he took the easy way out. 

Tardif has to come with. They were certain it was suicide when the man sent just the three the last time, but Dismas doesn’t need a random fucking healer from the stage coach. Three or two?- it couldn’t matter, just one less for the funeral pyre. 

He feels under his coat for flint and steel - _Thunder and Lightning,_ they were called, a far cry from what he used in London. 

If he’s coming out of the fire he might as well come out a better forged weapon. 

_ 

The nun appraises him with a new look creeping into her eye. She turns before Dismas can make much sense of it, going over to a small table beyond Dismas' reach. On it is a bottle, half full, and she pours it carefully onto a small spoon of tarnished silver. 

Everything here was tarnished, no matter how much it was built up, no matter how much they scrubbed and prayed and toiled. 

"You were apparently half-mad by the time they calmed you -- drink this and drink it quick." It's the only warning Dismas gets before the spoon is slipped into his mouth with matronly ease. She’s done this before, countless times. Whatever concoction was on that spoon is syrupy on the tongue and unpleasantly bitter. 

The spoon withdraws and is quickly deposited. She smooths out her habit and looks him over once more. "There's someone who said he'd like to see you -- should be here quickly, I suspect, as he instructed one of the sisters to fetch him soon as you woke." 

A familiar helm peeks through, pauses. The rest of Tardif quickly follows. The nun offers Tardif a stiff half-nod of her head that's little more than the jutting of her chin, before she strides out. The door closes loudly, leaving them both in ringing silence. 

He waits for the sound of the nun's steps plodding down the hallway before reaching into his pocket, pulling out the familiar red gem. 

"Found this outside of town," he says palming it gently, "next to the tracks. It was placed." He waits, watching Dismas and letting his thumb rub at a fleck of dirt stuck on the ruby. 

_ 

The heat from the medicine recedes and leaves him cold, or it could be the ruby grasped by a dirty glove, and if the man says it’s been placed then it’s been placed – no question. Dismas has seen Tardif track down a wild boar with a handful of week-old indents on the forest floor, and he reckons he’s had to know this sort of thing for years now to get by. 

Breadcrumb trail, only it’s far better game than breadcrumbs. Something’s calling to him, alright, and he doesn’t need the old man telling him it’s in the Estate, and it’s got Reynauld. He’s stupid, but he’s no fool. 

“You saw where those prints were heading,” he says, and before Tardif can say anything he adds, “I don’t need to have tracked them to know they’re headed for the Estate.” 

Dismas sits up in the bed, looks the man in the visor. “We’re heading out at sundown. I’ve enough coin to cover provisions.” He doesn’t say _are you with me_? He is. 

He stares at the ruby, half expecting it to shift in its space into one of those goddamn trapezohedrons, and he reckons setting Reynauld to rest if he’s been reanimated is as good as any wedding ring. Make up for not saying goodbye, not telling him where he comes from, what year it is where he lives, where he _really_ lives- 

The soothsayer. If he’s still in the taverns, he needs to go to him. Find out what he knows for one last expedition. And if he’s not – well. He needs a drink anyway. 

Dismas sits back in the bed. “I’ll see you at sundown, outside the Yellow Hand,” then “say your prayers, mate,” quieter this time. He’s ready to risk his life to bring down one last necromancer, but he couldn’t ask the same of him. 

_ 

Mad men brave the darkest sanctum of the manor's estate. Still, even the maddest among them hadn't had the wherewithal left to brave it twice. 

Tardif thinks Dismas is suicidal. If some part of him died down there with the halfmen and had bound the rest of him to this place, an anchor pulling him down, down, down- 

Would he follow? He watches the ruby catch the light. He'd long since abandoned everything else before taking up the axe and hunting down thieves, rapists, cheaters – the only thing left worth a spit was that eternal wheel of gold, changing hands, changing lives he'd never see. 

He had no illusions about his own intelligence – he was no heir of a noble house, plucking at the unseen threads that make up reality. One first closes around the ruby, the solidarity of it unspoken. 

He didn't know. He figured he'd never know, would never have the chance to figure it out if anything went wrong, or if anything went right. 

"I don't need prayers," Tardif says, tossing the ruby in Dismas' lap and turning around. "I just need to sharpen my axe." 

This is the Plan. Terrible, hopeless, unfathomably stupid. Completely theirs. 

By the time Dismas reaches the tavern the sun has passed its zenith, on its slow journey back down. It's fairly quiet in there – most people are out and about making last-minute plans for leave – but the old man sits at the bar as before, thumbing his cane. It's strange that he stayed. Still, the town has seen stranger. 

"The bride should wear something old, something red." The old man doesn't look at Dismas while he speaks. "Something borrowed, something bled.” 

_ 

Dismas doesn’t remember the first time he acknowledges that something’s fucked in the continuum – was it the pulling his own bloodied head out of a burlap sack, the duplicate lockets with the doppelganger woman and child, the journal pages? – Maybe not those, he could rationalize then that all highwaymen drank and ran their good luck into the ground, but when he found the poetry he had to stop. 

_Something red_ \- he clutches the ruby close – god knows everyone in Anchester knew. They knew before he did why Reynauld was paired with him for every dungeon – and he wonders in how many timelines Reynauld dies to the Heart, in how many he dies before then, in how many he marries, in how many he _remarries_ \- 

That’s enough. He’s watching the soothsayer and his cane, and he wonders in how many timelines he goes back to the tavern. He wonders in how many that it makes a difference between now and tomorrow. 

Dismas takes a seat – not adjacent, leaving a space between them. “Tell me what you’ve seen in your cards, soothsayer.” He delays on the drink. That can wait. 

_ 

"Cards.” The old man raises his head, so much he nearly cranes his neck. There's an old scar there, over the wrinkled but pronounced tendons, healed over long ago. 

“No cards. I see the bilge water stained memories – aye, miles underground in Carcosa – and the whispers. The future was written so long ago, it was forgotten." 

The wrinkles deepen at the corners of his eyes. Is he in pain? Concentrating? 

"A heart brings old blood into its folds, sends new blood out into the body. Endless cycles, unbroken since before there was water on the earth. Before there was fruit, there was Adam, destined to pick it." He hunches over as he turns his head to Dismas. "More difficult, than ever before. You must be prepared to make terrible choices alone, I promise you – you are safe at last." 

_ 

So, the old man’s no roadside charlatan, and Dismas knows he’s worse off knowing he’s a bona fide clairvoyant. 

Carcosa – the name is from a work of fiction, something he’d read while on the roads – he’s read just about everything he could get his hands on, anything to stave off the loneliness while on the hunt. It’s the King in Yellow he means, surely, because they’re sitting in the eponymous Yellow Hand, and they’re in His domain right now, the whole town a testament to the birth of human civilization to be bred to feed the Heart- 

“Choices alone. Right, mate. It’s always got to be me. I suppose everyone else, even Tardif, gets a free fucking pass,” and is he _really_ going to throw a tantrum about having one last opportunity to see Reynauld again? Yes, he is. 

“Tell me, wise man, look into your crystal ball. What else is left for the Heart to take from me?” _Boon or burden? Boon or burden?_ He can’t decide. The sun’s going down quickly. 

_ 

The old man takes the brunt of his bitterness without blinking but at the mention of Tardif his eyes darken considerably. 

His head shrinks back into the cowl wrapped around his neck, covering his mouth and whatever grim line it must've made. When he raises his head again there is something else there as well. Fear. 

"Everything,” he says. He hasn't moved his fingers so much as a twitch. 

He tilts his head in the direction of the door. Nothing out of the ordinary sounds out. "No, nothing left to laugh about.” 

_ 

Dismas watches him leave, doesn’t bother helping him to the door when he shakes. He got here just fine on his own, didn’t he? It doesn’t make him feel as guilty as it should have. 

Everything, sure. So he dies. Nothing wrong with that, no need to be cryptic about it, and maybe Dismas knows that’s what he gets for stepping foot into the Estate twice when most people don’t live to see the aboveground again. He's sure if the heir was still here, he'd have a proper laugh; he’s a pawn for going, and he’s a pawn for staying put. No shame in this, no shame in any of this, and if he’s gone before he’ll fucking manage it again. 

Tardif’s outside, weapons in tow. The hook’s shined and sharpened to a fine point – Dismas remembers it breaking off at the tip when he hooked it straight into the mammoth cyst’s eye. 

Always buying them time. 

He’s got a hell of a skillset, and he’s got to know the old man’s said something, but Dismas reckons he won’t ask, even if it could mean life or death. The nondisclosure clause is pretty strong with him. Dismas tosses him his knapsack with an even split of provisions, the contents the same as before but more knowledgeable this time – more cans, more torches, enough holy water to bathe a parish priest. 

There’s nothing left to say, but he tries anyway. “You ready, good man?” 

_ 

Tardif's as unreadable as usual; he turns his head down the cobblestone streets, lost in his own head. 

It was likely he'd never see this town again. It was likely he'd never see the _sun_ again. He had passed seasons in this place now. 

He sat at the table with scholars from the Middle East and holy nuns of Rome, and he'd watched them all die. 

The faces at the table had become a blur to him. _It’s natural,_ he thinks, no shame in this, and lets the numbness seep into his chest, his feet. 

A gleam catches the metal of his helm when he turns. "I'm ready." 

The journey alone to the entrance of the dungeon took them a time that felt both like eternity and mere minutes; then they’re confronted with the cathedral doors, caustic in their assembly. 

Tardif has the sudden urge to turn his gaze back to the hamlet, back to a place that hadn't been all that safe but was safe enough, compared to their next journey, and for a split second he thinks it would be easy to walk back the way he came with his newfound riches, leave the highwayman here, alone, to die in the dark where he should have before– 

And then he steps forward into that red haze awaiting beyond. 

He doesn’t look back, as Lot’s wife towards Sodom. He says nothing at all. 

Nothing had changed since the last expedition. The infernal maze of the first floor was untouched – even more untouched, it seemed, than when they'd left it. There were no bodies strewn about, no rotting husks left behind, human or not. Beyond the groaning of the earth and the mechanical grinding below, it was silent. 

_ 

The Red is one of the last things to give them the old fear; it was something not even the comfort of Alhazred’s presence could staunch, and it gets worse the further into the Heart’s body they descend. 

The Estate is just one large transplant, each door an orifice into its arteries, the cultists sleeping and living and working in each protrusion. _It’s all gone_ , Dismas thinks, _all the half-men and their dead_ , and the thought disturbs him more than it ever has. Did the cultists in the catacombs, did they mourn, and these – were they too far gone to- 

Tardif stops him before he walks into one of the cultists’ pet acolytes weeping on the chamber floor. 

Was he it, then? Did they leave him behind, or something else? 

Dismas doesn’t even waste a bullet on him. The knife cleaves into his misshapen head, soft in the top like it’s gone to seed, and Dismas thinks he’s not so different from him. 

Not a one of them is in sight, and maybe the Heart couldn’t spare the strength to ‘contract’ with each of them anymore – each manticore, each priest, each pustule must have numbered hundreds, maybe even in the thousands further into the asylum of the body, and it’s been dealt a serious blow. It’s gone into retreat now, drawn its children further into its folds where they sleep as neonates, awaiting rebirth. 

Dismas doesn’t know if they’re the same across all of the cycles, remade as they were before the final expedition, if he is the same each time- 

“We can make camp here for the night.” He slings the knapsack onto the flesh that constitutes the floor this far into the body. He takes the kindling out, and really they must have walked well into the early hours of morning – without the perpetual motion, he’s wrung out, and he needs to eat but being in a cavernous flesh-made house sears the appetite. Dismas waits until after they’ve broken bread to speak. 

“They’re all gone, mate, but not dead, and I don’t reckon it’s the Heart what’s absorbed their bodies.” 

_ 

Tardif's initial instinct is to press on rather than spend another unnecessary moment in this hell – while the followers lay scattered, or weeping, or inert, or just straight up _gone,_ he feels no safer than he did during their first expedition. 

Discipline gives him the wisdom to stamp down that urge; they've been traveling for what feels like hours now and the rest would do them good for – whatever they face below. It was already a suicide mission. No need to push it. 

He humors Dismas with a brief nod of his head, and they make camp in relative silence. The fire was the only light they'd seen that didn't emanate from some ungodly source. It was a small comfort, no doubt, but Tardif sees it for what it is for the first time, a reminder of the world above, of dirt and sea brine and foaming froth topping ale. 

He'd half expected either one of them would die on the way, joining Baldwin in the depths – wherever his body was now. He pushed it down as he took his bread, head tilting in his companion's direction. 

"Seems that the binge drinking didn't dull your awareness." There was no judgement or condescension to it, just interest. He'd noticed much of the same during the walk up but hadn't been quite sure when to bring it up – hadn't felt quite safe talking in general. The silence was uneasy enough and he'd gotten it into his head that anything louder than their breath might bring those transformed abominations down on them, tails swinging and maws gaping. 

"Something . . . isn't right." His lips had drawn into a thin line in thought. 

Intuition was a tool, same as any other, but there was a time and a place to use it. He relied on it far less than he did reason and logical deduction; all that was left now was a 

strange pull in his gut whispering _wrong, wrong, wrong_. His free hand ran over his hook idly while he ruminated, staring at the fire. 

_ 

Dismas laughs, in earnest this time, and it catches him by surprise – maybe because nobody’s questioned the drinking before. Reynauld a bit, but everyone just assumes he’s got a hard limit. He’s sure he did, once. 

“Aye. The drink has made me immortal, don’t you know? You’ve seen it for yourself.” He’s sober again when he turns his face down. None of the food is of the cooked variety, so the fire’s just for reassurance. 

The wax paper crinkles as it’s peeled back to dole out the wedge of cheese. 

Tardif is on edge, he knows it, and if the man had it his way they’d be marching to pull the bollocks clean off the Heart in a single night, and if Dismas had it his way they’d do the same – but he’s a coward, sure as anything, and not even the calling of his beloved or the ancestor or whatever the Thing Down Under has metastasized into could change that-

  


_”Come, let’s away! We’ve lost this!”_

He’s the first to lose his nerve, pulling on Baldwin’s arm like a lost child and obstructing his swing to the giant’s stomach, and it’s his fault that they have to camp early, Junia nose-deep in the Verses, Baldwin nursing his crushed arm. 

It’s the first time that Baldwin is deeply, genuinely angry with him, and Dismas could just about burn under his disapproval, and maybe this is enough that he’ll refuse to serve with him forever onwards, or snub him when he needs the help, but Baldwin doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t even take the mask off at the fire. He sits, and he stares, and he says, 

_“You disappoint me.”_

And Dismas thinks that he couldn’t have said it worse. 

  


“What after, Tardif? You’ll leave for other prospects, I’m sure. This town’s been bled dry. Off to greener pastures you go.” Dismas grins around a mouthful of bread, but it’s empty this time. “Tell you what, you catch me on the outside, you can take me to London. They’ll pay you well for my head,” and he’s paying a heavy luxury tax just saying out loud the _fantasy_ of ever making it to the outside. 

_ 

The leather of his glove creaks when he tightens his grip on the hook. 

Few things in the world grounded him the way his tools did; whether he hunted the streets of a backwater slum or the luxury parlors, they were all he could depend on. 

What after? What indeed - he had been spiraling without realizing it, settling into grim acceptance down here. It’s something, he realizes, that he respected about Dismas: he was afraid to die. Fear let made him cling to life despite the impossible, or at least – it had in the past. He needed the illusion. 

His grip relaxes a bit on the hook. 

"I've no interest in turning you in." That’s not a lie either. He would've, had they met in a different place, a different time, but he didn't. 

A part of himself was slipping away into the fleshy corners beyond the haven of their campfire. He couldn't bring himself to take another bite. He wrapped the remains and put it away in the pack. 

"I'll keep watch. You rest first." 

_ 

“You’ll say different,” Dismas says, “when the money runs out,” and they spend their money the same – ale, whores, bread, a bed for the night. He knows how quick a sovereign runs dry living like that. 

He rolls the knapsack under his head without bothering to empty it of its provisions – one expedition in the coves saw to an ambush at camp, according to its survivors, who had emptied the knapsacks to smooth out the canvas – one small comfort that cost them their torches and food. 

Two men came back. Dismas remembers. 

Tardif’s absolutely silent when he keeps watch, and even Dismas does _something_ when he’s on guard – cards, dice, reading. It’s really not the eyes that do the work, it’s the ears, so says any criminal when the fire goes out, but he’s exhausted and they’re so close to the belly of the entity, so Dismas sleeps. 

_

Dismas thinks he sees something in the darkness, and he’s not wide-eyed like he was when he first saw him. This time, he’s fucking angry. 

“Fuck off, I’m here to give you a proper burial. You want that or not?” he says, or he thinks he says, but really it’s like he’s speaking into amniotic fluid. 

The womb? It couldn’t be. It didn’t exist, or it probably didn’t exist in a way that he could comprehend, just like how the portrait of the ancestor was not as he really was, and 

Dismas is grateful that he only has to see an analogue to actual mind-bending horror.  


Reynauld’s there in the wet darkness, dressed in white shift – a virgin on the cultist sabbath – and Dismas can only vaguely understand the conception of _sacrifice_ when man was young and afraid, but this isn’t how the Roman Catholics do it – it’s lambs, _it should be a lamb_ , some sort of livestock – but isn’t this what man was bred for? It is. The lambs were never going to be enough for the Heart, and Satan’s greatest work was in convincing Abel that they would be safe at last.  


Is it Reynauld? Fuck. It could be anyone, really. It could be the bloody ancestor, for all he knows, it’s just a man, but he’s all he can think about and Dismas thinks it’ll be _so_ easy. All he has to do is call his name and just like that, he’ll turn around, he’ll bring himself back from the dead, he’ll forget his wife and child-  


He’s walking towards a thing. Dismas thinks it’s some kind of massive bas relief but then it peels itself back to reveal its hives, a monument of trypophobia, Orion’s belt multiplied a thousand-fold around its shell. It’s the only source of light in the fluid, and Reynauld’s drawn to it like a moth to flame-  


“ _Reynauld_!” Dismas screams, then “Reynauld,” and this is like the final dungeon all over again, and he regrets it all just to see this for what it _really_ is - but the man turns, and he looks at him, for just one moment.  


_  


Reynauld turns his head, profile gleaming in the wet darkness.  


All the awful stars pale in comparison to the single point of supernova light that radiates from Reynauld's eye. It's _blinding_. A sunburst in miniature that blinked, before his lips parted to utter something incomprehensible. The massive network of an abomination behind him seemed to writhe in response. It wiggled, pulsating and blooming in the fluid, massive limbs spreading wide as a lover's arms would for embrace.  


"Couldn't bring yourself to run away, could you?" Reynauld said, the humor twisted by the bellows of the creature as a part of it stretched forward to pull him into its squirming folds- 

_

The fire had been reduced to smoking debris, Dismas fitfully asleep by its ashy tufts. Tardif was not sure when unconsciousness claimed him, but it had. There was only so much the body could take, it seemed.  


He still awoke before Dismas in a gurgling snarl, sweating, heart hammering so loudly he’s certain the Heart had descended upon their miniscule camp. His grip is around his axe before his brain registered it was in his hand. His head swings wildly, eyes squinting into the dark, only to be met with silence; he relaxes, only enough to realize he’s shaking. The tremors persist even after noticing Dismas; was the other man awake or asleep? It wasn't easy to tell in his disoriented state.  


He pulls his helm down, hiding any lingering terror. Turning away from his companion, he stares into the dark again, an unshakable watch dog at his post. He doubts Dismas would press, if he did notice.  


He didn’t dare close his eyes, but he did force a deep breath into the bottom of his lungs.  


This was a hunt, same as any other. They were not the prey.  


_  


“Fuck,” Dismas says, then ” _Fuck_ ,” running his hand down his face as he sits up – it’s been less than a full day since they’ve come back from the final dungeon, and there’s only so much stamina to be regained in sleep.  


Tardif, though – the man’s a machine, sitting silent at his post, vigilant as ever – nighttime watch has always separated the professionals from the glory-seekers.  


Dismas sits up, back aching from the stone floor and head aching from the tins in the knapsack, and he wonders if Tardif’s ever slept in his life – totally vapid of him, and he wonders – too late in the game, as always – if he mistakes him for discipline. Maybe all this time the man’s been more toy soldier than automaton, both equally as rigid, and it’s disturbing.  


So late in the game to have imposter syndrome for himself, for everyone around him. He might be going insane.  


He puts his hand to Tardif’s shoulder. “Go to sleep, mate. I’ll take the rest of watch until sunrise,” but whatever internal clock he’s had is completely fucked. He could have slept for minutes or hours, but he’s lost it, and it couldn’t matter; he’s not sleeping until he sees Reynauld.  


There’s nothing to stoke the fire. At least in the libraries or the shacks in the pigmen’s domain, there would be _something_ flammable, but the Estate is entirely stone and organ, and that’s something of a relief, really, because fire is one of the worst ways to go. The halfmen make it quick, desperate to feed the Heart, but fire takes its time. Tardif hasn’t moved, and Dismas knows he doesn’t talk unless it’s important, and in that regard they couldn’t be any more different – Dismas really only talks if it’s unimportant. 

He lights up, offering the pipe in the man’s direction. “Even you’ve got to sleep, sometime. What say you?"  


_  


A sharp intake of air slips between Tardif's clenched teeth – it takes all his discipline to keep himself from jumping then and there.  


Dismas hasn't noticed his tremors after all, by grace of grogginess or poor lighting – it doesn't matter. All that matters is the pipe in the man's hand and the promise of _sleep_ , exhaustion so deep it tugs his bones and makes the weight of his own chain heavy as a corpse.  


The analogy is as dreadful as his mood.  


He relinquishes his post, taking the pipe and drawing in smoke through his veil, grateful for the bitter taste. Grateful for anything that isn't damp, squirming darkness. The smoke calms him enough to still his hands and ease his breath.  


He drags on it one more time, handing it back to Dismas. A grunt is the only response Tardif gives, finding a spot on the floor and laying out on it. It could be a pile of pigmen corpses for all the difference it makes at that point; the moment he reluctantly shuts his eyes he's gone.  


This time, there's no dream. Just darkness.  


When he wakes again he momentarily forgets where he is and the realization seeps in with a numbness. There is only the ominous waiting before they encounter whatever abomination has been created out of their former man. The dull ache from sleeping on hard ground is almost welcome while they pack up what little they have – it reminds him, in the mass of organic chambers, that he is still alive and that he is not a part of It.  


_

The trek further down into the depths only gets more… fleshier as they go. Eventually any hint of stonework is swallowed completely by tentacles and eyes and other veiny appendages.  


The corridors eventually become more and more familiar as Tardif remembers their final encounter with the infernal Heart. The air becomes muskier, somehow, harder to breathe. There's a malevolent force here, though it's certainly not as oppressive as it was during their first encounter.  


Still. Very wrong. Very, very wrong indeed.  


He turns his head to the man on his left as they approach the circular entrance that they know gives way to horrid, countless stars.  


“You ready for this?"  


_  


The bas reliefs steadily got older, more profane, and less ambiguous the deeper into the Estate’s property the expeditions went, wherever that was – the warrens, the catacombs, anywhere on the peninsula, and this one has to be the oldest – as old as the Heart itself, more intimate than its own ribcage, safer than Hell.  


To Tardif, it’s probably just another gate, and this is the last thought that gives Dismas any comfort – off they go, two toy soldiers, wherever they go, whatever happens.  


Dismas presses one hand to the gate’s seam.  


“Here’s your answer.” He pushes.  


No apparition stands over them, pining for their attention like the last time, and even now he wonders what the man’s last gasp was in. Defiance? Greed? Dismas knows both. So did the heir. He’ll make a fine replacement.  


The corridor is still in the midst of cosmic sands, fog rendering its narrow path claustrophobic in a way the iron maidens could never come close to replicating, each step feeling as though he’ll fall through into the in-between and be trapped there forever, but eventually they’re _there_ and he’s standing face to face with his Maker – in its dormant form wrapped by the pseudo-spine that holds it in place like a tumor suspended in air and holds the ceiling of the final chamber, Jörmungandr cradling the world in its body, but there’s _something else_ , someone else.  


“Reynauld?”


	3. iii. Bargaining

To Tardif's credit, his grip on the axe never slackens, not once. It becomes his lifeline, his tether to this reality while toeing with the next.

Even as they reach the antechamber, he keeps it close. No matter what they see. 

In front of a cocoon, conceived in madmen's nightmares, dwarfed by its size and wrapped in sterile white – is Reynauld.  


He turns slowly to face them both, beard spotted with gray – and every wrinkle, every scar in place. Not a speck of blood stains his shift. He’s more priest than warrior, more messiah than soldier, less human than any of them. He is clean, and breathing, and _alive_.  


"Hello, Dismas."  


His eyes are bright, appraising the man, old friend.  


"Tardif." He nods at him. Tardif's shoulders stiffen.  


“What trickery is this?" It comes out as guttural snarl, ringing clear past fabric and padded leather.  


"Not the work of one of the necromancers, if that's what you're implying." Behind Reynauld the cocoon beats. A near inaudible, inhuman sigh passes over them.  


“Witchery, then." Tardif's gloved fingers clench and unclench around the hook. He won't start a fight but he's more than ready for one, now. To see a man he respected if nothing else being used as a puppet by – by who knows what. Such an old-fashioned cruelty.  


Reynauld shakes his head, looking away for a moment. "Witchcraft, dark magic, polytheism, monotheism – all synonymous." There was a ghost of his pride, tempered with certainty that had nothing to do with faith.  


His attention turned to Dismas again. "You’re here." There was no mistaking the relief in his tone. "Now you're finally here."  


_  


Reynauld looks exactly like he did before he was taken, salt in his beard, same crow’s feet from laughing at the campfire when Dismas recounts the same stupid story about ambushing a rival bandit camp washing up in the river-  


Tardif's his last lifeline. If he weren't here who knows what he would have done, and he wonders what happens after the sacrifice, when the Israelites disperse, burnt remains were sent up to God – were they recreated as they were in life in the kingdom of heaven?  


Is this, then-  


“What do you want?” Tardif’s angry, and it gives him some courage but not enough to say what he really wants to say, so he settles. “What do you want from me?”  


What happens after the Rapture, when the sinners are left? Do they need to be afraid? Dismas thinks by then it's much too late, years too late to think it matters.  


_  


Reynauld studies him, expressionless.  


"You spent your entire life believing you were worth nothing." He steps forward. He's completely unarmed but still carries himself as a crusader: chest out, jaw parallel to the ground.  


Tardif swears he feels the ground pulsing beneath his feet, as if they were in the cavity of a whale. He's not sure how he hasn’t noticed it before.  


"I judged you so harshly at first, for this trait we share. Only you were able to express it so freely, in everything you say, and I- " His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. "I never could."  


"Get to the fucking point." Tardif says. This thing was playing mind games, toying with its food. He didn't need Dismas buying into it.  


“You can come as you are." Reynauld pulls a ruby out of his shift. "And in turn, I would give you something instead. Something worth far more." It slips out of his hands and falls to the ground, making little sound as it did.  


"Peace."  


_  


Dismas knows that it’s not his Reynauld, just the same as he did in the dream, and it’s the same feeling – tacky in the middle, a bad glamour, and he feels guilty but suddenly he resents bringing the other man, that he’d rather be devoured alone than have to share-  


“Peace? If I wanted peace, I’d have become a candlemaker,” Dismas says, any semblance of identity slipping away under the cracks of the stonework.  


It’s a clever bit of social engineering, that. The Heart wants to eat, nothing more, and it’s lured them here for more – the two that got away, the best it’ll have in years, the caviar of men.  


If there were more there would be a need for formation, but Dismas is right there so he levels the gun at Reynauld’s chest-  


“You may live to see God yet,” a voice says, and Dismas swings the barrel’s sight to Baldwin’s head, and he very nearly drops the gun.  


He laughs but doesn’t dare blink. “I suppose you swore fealty to the cultist queen for your life when they left you down here, and I don’t blame you. Would’ve done the same in a fucking _second_.”  


Baldwin looks him in the eyes. “It will be a few years’ time yet, but the next man is coming. And when he does, he’ll assemble an army of his most pathetic and send their least broken to the Heart on a silver platter.”  


“I… I couldn’t care less,” Dismas says, and he means it.  


“You don’t have much time left,” Baldwin says.  


Tardif’s not interested in a fucking word. He’s in lockstep with the man in front, one careless move away from opening fire. Why he hasn’t yet is a mystery.  


Baldwin extends his hand.  


“You’re right. The Heart knows no mercy. But the Heart knows sedation.”  


“It’s all a lie, then."  


He’s backing up as Baldwin walks closer, like a cornered animal.  


“You can have whatever in life you’ve never been allowed to have,” Baldwin says, head tilted to his side, to Reynauld. “Could you imagine? You can have the rest of eternity to talk, to sleep. Like you’ve always wanted. Nothing will have hold of you – not the alcohol, not the anger.”  


He’s one step away, reaching out for his firearm. “Say yes, brother.”  


Dismas opens fire.  


_  


The gunshot sings – it’s all Tardif hears before he unwinds like a spring, a man made of leather and steel aiming for Reynauld's head.  


His roar of rage is cut short by a sickening sound.  


Tentacles spring forth from the wetness beneath their feet, ensnaring Tardif sure as a fly in a spider's web. His axe clatters to the ground as he's left helplessly entangled in the Heart's grip. A snarl breaks free from him as he hangs there, limbs struggling against eldritch binds.  


Reynauld watches placidly, unblinking.  


“I remember standing where you are now," Reynauld says, stepping forward. The proximity of Dismas and Baldwin's struggle hardly seems to bother him.  


"I embraced, as all men do, what I believed to be salvation: the Light." Tardif is bound so tightly he can only manage to flex his hands into fists. It was clear even with the helm on that he was ready to tear through those tentacles with his teeth if need be.  


“I never could've understood then as I do now; to serve the Light, I embrace the wisdom of the Dark. When all else is unnecessary – all else can be left behind." Reynauld reaches with paternal gentleness to pull down Tardif's veil, slip the metal helm off his head and let it fall to the ground near his treasured weapon.  


"You came willingly," Reynauld says. "You knew, and you came anyway."  


"Stick it up your ass." Tardif spits, one final act of defiance.  


"Your puppet is unconvincing at best."  


"Was the Ancestor a puppet? To the reckless pursuit of knowledge, perhaps, and his own vices – but in dying he became an orchestrator, just as one man becomes martyr. It need only require one death. He became more." Reynauld turns to Dismas now, inhuman glint in his eyes.  


He wipes the spittle off of his cheek. "You both expected death down here, did you not? Only the true death is found above."  


"Go to hell, you goddamned octopus."  


Reynauld laughs, but not really – "There is no hell. There is also no heaven. Just this empty space. A privilege to be alive here, in the In-Between.”  


_  


Baldwin hasn’t bothered with calling the Heart’s bindings – Dismas is frozen in place as is.  


The moment the bullet sunk into his shift he knew it was a mistake, and here’s another thing to be guilty for: Tardif, coming forth in tandem with the only other human in the room, trapped now because of him. The man’s started each hunt alone but for his time under the heir’s contract and look where having faith got him.  


Look where having faith got any of them.  


“Wait,” Dismas says. “Leave him alone. I’m the one you want.”  


Baldwin hums, and maybe Dismas has spent too long in the darkness and the filth because he knows the Heart like an estranged son, its intuition: Baldwin surely would be calling for someone else, because he’s no wiser now than he was then, a dead king with a professional fool as bedfellow.  


“Sarmenti,” Dismas manages to get out.  


“Not mine to have,” Baldwin says, “And it doesn’t matter now. Nothing has hold when you’re one with the Progenitor,” and this disturbs him more than the ghosts given form and the weeping acolytes, left abandoned in the new world order’s ascension.  


_You said you can have anything you’ve ever wanted_ , but it’s like a deal with a demon, isn’t it – Midas praying for the gold touch and dying of starvation. An eternity together, spent sedated out of all feeling.  


Reynauld’s fast approaching, hand out to hold his head, and Dismas knows it isn’t death but he can’t imagine becoming the eidolon in the halls, or the ghost by the signpost and smashed carriage on the Old Road, pointing outwards, begging them back to civilization-  


“Don’t tell me I’ll be fashioned into a ghost, I can’t stomach that,” Dismas says, but how else does eternity exist?  


“Tell me I’ll still be a man, same as ever, old boy.” His voice cracks. He pretends it doesn’t.  


_  


Tardif's voice is gritty with panic, for the first time seeping through the veil.  


"Don't let it win, damn you."  


"I would never." Reynauld's gaze passes over Baldwin before settling on Dismas.  


"I would never steal something from you. Just as the devout believe they'll pass through the golden gates you pass through me – only fewer angels are present."  


His steps are measured as he nears. "You’ll fear nothing, not ever again." Behind Reynauld the calcite mass blooms, tendrils reaching eagerly for prey. For Dismas, presumably. They wrap him in their damning embrace hungrily, patiently.  


Reynauld is within arm's reach, so Dismas reaches.  


He touches him as they had in barrack beds and by firelight in crumbling ruins and under Diana’s chariot at night–  


The beat of the Heart is gaining momentum. His arm braces Dismas's back, his hand cradling his head. He doesn’t pull Dismas closer; even here, in the privacy of Hell, 

Reynauld (or an echo of him) touches with reverence. He says, "And I need only wait a little longer."  


His head snaps to Tardif.  


"I thank you for bringing him safely to me. For that, I will reward you this: I will make it as swift and painless as possible."  


Tardif's expression falls, body going limp. "Now. Come unto your maker."  


There is no final scream, final word or so much as a breath – a sickening crack signals something vital in him being torn, the light abruptly fading from his eyes as his head snaps forward, hanging limply against his chest. The tentacles undulate, leaving his body on the floor.  


_  


Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh _fuck_ -  


Baldwin wheels the body out by the boots. Tardif’s headpiece almost comes off when his head drags, and that seems sacrilegious, somehow. Dismas can barely stand it. He almost says _where are you taking him_ , but he knows where – and Reynauld’s smiling and something’s got him by the heart and pulls him down to the floor-

_

Light filters into the athenaeum’s east wing.  


Alhazred palms the head of a taxidermized rabbit that’s been affixed to a wooden stand, picking it up and smacking the table across from where he’s standing.  


“Do pay attention. I know you’re not paying tuition, but I hardly appreciate it when my students are slacking.”  


“I hardly believe it,” Dismas pulls the feather from the well – “and it’s not like I haven’t tried.  


Alhazred grins. “’I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’” Impossibly well-read bastard, quoting the Red Queen.  


“The human hand, the lizard’s foot, the bird’s wing, the whale’s fin,” Alhazred says. “The underlying bone structure is homologous. Ergo, at one point in time,” here he points to the branching diagram on the board, “they must have shared a common ancestor.”  


“It’s complete bollocks,” Dismas grunts, but he says, “tentacles? What about the tentacles.”  


“I beg your pardon.”  


“Like, you know-“ he pulls his fingers together and mimes a wiggling arm, “on an octopus,” and the question isn’t as subtle as he thinks it is because Alhazred’s shoulders slump just a bit when he turns to the board.  


“Ah. No. The arms of a sea star, say, or the leg of a grasshopper. An octopus’ arm, as well – none of those are homologous to the human hand.”  


“Then, when they made us. Why’d they choose the hand?”  


Alhazred spins around, impassioned. “They didn’t _make_ us. We were errant flesh,” he says, “and we _chose_ the hand. Never forget that.” 

_

Consciousness hits him like first morning after an expedition. His mouth is dry and his back fucking _hurts_ , and sunlight hurts too.  


Sunlight?-  


Dismas grabs his own chest, then stomach, then leg, then ass – it’s all there.  


“God’s thumbs,” he breathes, but before he counts his blessings he pulls out the tatters of his undershirt from beneath the overcoat.  


Sitting square in the middle of his chest is a surgical cut, carved round the top and fastened by five sutures.  


The Iron Crown.  


“So that’s the catch,” Dismas mutters, the edges of the Crown stinging as if in rebuke. He doubles over, coughing. He’s back on the Old Road. No, more than that – there’s a rotting stagecoach lodged into one side of the mountain pass. He would laugh if he could.  


“Reynauld, old boy,” he says, as if he can hear him. Who the fuck knows? “I’m telling your wife that you summoned me instead of her-“  


Oh, _fuck_ , the burning’s starting to hurt now. “Steady! I won’t make it to Anchester before nightfall if you keep it up,” he gasps. The burning recedes. He traces one finger on the edge of the curve.  


“When will I see you again?” The Crown stays silent.  


Venus and Jupiter have already made it to the night sky by the time Dismas finds himself at the barrack’s steps again.  


_  


Silence settles in the Hamlet. There's no croaking or buzzing or howling beyond the trees, no insomniac's boots slapping against cobblestone.  


Perhaps time has simply stood still. Maybe it's even stopped.  


Within the barracks there's the familiar night sounds of strangers, the snoring and heavy breathing and shuffle of linens. They're all buried under their thin sheets, staving off the cold. Moonlight suggests just enough for him to see his own bunk left untouched. So is Tardif's. The chest holding his personal affects lays untouched at the foot of his made bed. A sharpening stone had been placed upon the covers, carefully – as if it were a final offering.  


One poor recruit whimpers, turning in his sleep. The fact that none of them have apparently raided their belongings speaks volumes on their joint objective: to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible, taking nothing of the Hamlet with them but their coin.  


_  


He’s standing under a midday sun in the scratchy brown-gold of rye, spanning out to the half-rotted wood fencing.  


Dismas squints, sweat beading. Rye, and wheat –  


“So the Greeks got it right the first time,” said to no one, and he’d be content to walk the field for the rest of eternity if he didn’t hear the sound of running water.  


He doesn’t know if he’s surprised when he sees Reynauld, out of tabard and in serf’s shift, sharpening a knife on a whetstone, wattle and daub house behind him a testament to working humility.  


It’s perfectly quaint – countryside marred by dirt roads, an Old World forest line dotted in heather. Cicadas sound off – in the distance, the sloping noise of a water wheel hitting the creek’s surface.  


He supposes it’s befitting for him to be here – after all, Reynauld was privy to his street in London, wasn’t he, and now he’s a guest in his home.  


That he shares with his wife and his son, that even now he should be sharing with wife and son were it not another old man standing adjacent, were it not that he was anointed in oil and sent off for the King’s wars-  


“You were supposed to be His chosen,” he thinks he says, and Reynauld looks up, and for a moment he thinks maybe they’ve slipped into the In-Between into another time, just like the King in Yellow when he’s out to collect, one where Reynauld comes home from the crusades and holds his grown boy and sunburned wife close and tells them that he’s better now, but he smiles instead and he knows that this one’s his.  


_  


"I was chosen – it didn’t mean I would be His." Reynauld's face is tranquil in a way Dismas has never seen him in all their time together.  
He follows the other’s line of sight around his home, the wilderness bordering tamed earth.  


"And granted Paradise, only – from an unexpected source." He abandons the whetstone and knife on a stump and makes his way over to Dismas, old eyes wet with humor.  


Between the crushing loneliness of existence and eternal unity in the garden of Eden they choose the former, every time. So it’s always been.  


"As were you. And Tardif. He is resting somewhere in this eternal dream." He scans the horizon, the endless fields and the nothingness beyond them. The Heart didn't erase the lines of age from his face, or the scars, but it had straightened his posture, turned the furrow between his brow into one of contemplation instead of misery. He looked good. He looked happy.  


"I had asked him in the end what he wanted, and he agreed. His body was rendered asunder and so gave his soul up to his maker. Still. " Something in Reynauld's eyes darkens just a bit. "You rejected it. The thought of joining me here repulses you. Is it too perfect for your liking?”  


_  


Dismas knows, honestly, that it’s been half a week since he’s seen him, out there, he means – not in a fever dream like this. And yes, he doesn’t recognize Reynauld without the petty anger, but – well. And he’s right – if they wanted they could be here, happily ever after.  


But still, it’s _wrong_. This is the home he and his betrothed moved into. They had a springtime wedding. Dismas remembers, one of the expeditions in the warrens where Reynauld had stepped into a bear trap and almost lost a leg, sweat running patterns through the grime on his face, completely out of his mind–  


” _She had honeysuckle woven into her braid on our wedding day. I’d thought for sure the swineherd would make me return his pigs from the dowry, but it was too late then, though I eventually paid him in full_ ,” he’d cried – or maybe he laughed?, clutching Dismas’ shirt. ” _I promised she could have as many sheep as she wanted. She loves them when they’re young, you know, the newborn ewes. Stupid of me, I didn’t have the money for that-_ ” He’d passed out, bile in his mouth, bile in both of their mouths.  


“I’m not your wife, you know.” Dismas goes to finger his flask in the overcoat, only to find it gone. “And – and I know, ‘regret is a sin,’ but this certainly feels like sin too.”  


Reynauld’s opening his mouth before he says, “and I don’t mean the two men part, that I couldn’t care less for, but the – _fuck’s sake_. Reynauld. I won’t stay and play house with you,” but would that be so awful? Some stability, at last, the worst thing about a day being the dishes going unwashed or the floor left unswept.  


But none of it’s real. It’s all just one long fever dream, and his man’s got himself convinced that it’s his reward in Paradise. To reward him for his service with an eternity of adultery. It’s incredible the lengths he’ll go to to inure himself.  


Dismas looks up, as if distracted. “Why am I still alive, Reynauld?”  


_  


"Because it's what you wanted." Reynauld says, like that was all that mattered to him – and wasn’t it?  


He returns to his whetstone and knife, the room quiet save for the methodical rippling noise of the metal.  


"And no, you certainly are not my wife. She was much prettier." Is he teasing?  


"You assume I have no desire in this world other than to devour, but this operates on a half-truth. Reynauld's devotion to humanity and-" Reynauld pauses in his sharpening, pointing the knife at Dismas, "-you, especially, has allowed you your mercy." He ceases the sharpening, admiring the keen edge honed with patience and time.  


It was hard to believe this old man in poor shift was the face of an Eldritch God.  


"All living creatures return to me. That is the way of things. Some return sooner than others – it makes no difference." But that wasn't all, was it. It never was with the Heart, or Reynauld, or whatever it was now.  


Reynauld's eyes lose their color and they swirl black, spotting with tiny pinpricks of light. "So you are spared this humiliation. You are bound to me but free of will for as long as you continue to walk this earth. When it is time to return, you will know." There is finality in his tone despite the easiness of his expression, one small bending of the continuum.  


"You will go where you wish and spread the Crown’s influence far beyond the reaches of this hamlet."  


_  


“Knew you’d show your true colors eventually.” Dismas spits on the not-ground. “Is it fun, fucking with the unintended Creation? Tell me, how angry are you that I knew better than to stay cocooned in the underground while my head goes off and tends a fake farm with your fake man?”  


Maybe he’d known, and it was fun to play pretend, but some part of him still wants to wheedle: _please God, how much of that was Reynauld? Tell me he’s still here, same as he ever was,_ but he doesn’t. He doesn’t get the chance.  


The next moment he’s tangled in sheets, surrounded in sweat and cold air. The Crown burns red hot on his chest in warning. It’s not so comforting now as it was. 

_

Alhazred hasn’t gone with the other villagers, riotous over the destruction and heresy of the heir in the morning. He sits with him on the steps, attentive in a rare distraction from his onslaught of papers following the revelations.  


“He doesn’t deserve death,” Dismas says, rolling the half-peeled egg in his gloves. Despite everything, he doesn’t think he deserves it.  


“Don’t worry about that. They can’t lynch a dead man,” Alhazred says. “I’ve only managed to secure safe passage out onto the Isles from here, after that I’ll have to get into contact with merchants on route to Baghdad.”  


Dismas squints. “He’s dead? Then – ah. He didn’t need to.”  


“He did,” Alhazred says. He pulls several documents out from the fold, wax seals catching on the edges.  


“There is – to the north of Baghdad is an army encampment, the city’s military powerbase. You may enter as a non-Arab soldier, although it requires first the conversion as a _mawali_. If not, the caliphate grants you protection as they do the Hebrews and Christians – there is-“  


“I appreciate the offer.” Alhazred’s crow’s-feet turn downward when he frowns.  


“No? You prefer the squalor of industrialization to the metropolis?” Alhazred sits back. “We all must leave. Sooner rather than later. The Heart cannot stand duplicates.”  


“I think – just this once, I think it does,” Dismas says, and he leaves, because he can’t stand the idea of showing him the Crown.  
  


EPILOGUE

  


Even when he makes leave on the next group of caravans to arrive in town knowing that he exists, just as everything on the estate and hamlet, to spread the influence of the Iron Crown – even then he thinks, this is a mercy.  


Knowing he’s been granted an extension of his mortality, long past God’s due, when his knees fail him many years down the line, then his eyes.  


Still, he thinks. It’s a mercy to be alive.  


He wonders at first, when he’s returned to the Outside where time is one solid pathway and has always been as such, how the Heart can indenture him – then he realizes that he is no longer a highwayman (he’ll never take arms again, not for lack of power but lack of will), and he is no longer under contracted pay. No one takes the hamlet’s sovereign – he’s got a fortune from a long-dead place, in real gold, but no way to smelt it down or exchange it for bread and board. For the first few weeks there’s room for him at the poorhouses, but eventually someone recognizes his face – or thinks they recognize him, who knows, it’s a chance he’s not willing to take.  


He plays cardsharper at places that have taken his picture down from the boards when they’d taken him for dead, but word catches fast under the tables – the papers are back, iron gall print of him on their fronts, titled, “Known Cheat!” At night he thumbs the hamlet’s coin against the ridges of his thumb, taking it for what it is: fool’s gold.  


He reckons that in the end, he’s indentured himself. He’ll know what it is to starve again – then what? The question circles him. He waits for the Crown to tell him what to do.

_

It’s nothing more than a parlor trick, that much is clear. He takes one hand from the willing dupe and makes as if to trace the heartline, when really he’s looking at their shoes. Dismas finds that a man’s lot in life, and therefore his troubles, are always tied up in the shoes.  


“You’re of poor temperament,” he mutters, tracing his Mount of Mars.  


The man’s sideburns quiver. “I couldn’t care less. What of the money?”  


“It’s not coming,” Dismas says. “It’s tied up in matters outside the business. I’m afraid your associate has been less than forthcoming about the true nature of his trading partners in India – better close your accounts, while you can.” This isn’t something that he’s read from the shoes. It’s just more than likely true.  


“ _That bastard_ ,” he roars, then “that _bitch_ ,” shortly after. It’s not surprising, but it is a boon – anger yields up the best information, but something suddenly feels different – strange, like something burning-  


“On second thought, _don’t_ close them.” The man looks up, red in the face. “Let them go into overdraft.”  


“What in-“  


“You’d best get your affairs in order.” He says it with a sharpness around the edges, a mistake, but the man doesn’t notice. His pockmarked face blanches.  


“You’ll be heading off to Bombay, I take it, to meet the Bastard and cut him off – but you’re not a well man, don’t you know,” Dismas says, pretending to trace his ring finger. 

“There’s nothing to do with diverting the disease now.”  


“I oughtn’t travel _at all,_ you old fool,” the man says, fumbling with his cravat. “I ought – ought to stay, see the physic down one precinct, he’s-“  


“You can, if you prefer,” Dismas says, “but he’ll drain you dry, knowing you’re to die, then tell you to go with God. I say, make haste with what you’ve still got. Go to Bombay, cut off your man-“ here he’s sure he’ll have a tell, but he resists – “and be sure to bring a few sepoys with you on land. For your protection.”  


“How long do I have?” The man’s already regained his composure, eyes set deep in his head like a bear’s.  


“Not long after India. Enough time to save your share of the business in the will. And-“ here the man smiles, catching his meaning- “enough time to leave the Bitch with the debts.”  


When the man makes to leave, Dismas says it in passing, almost in jest. “Oh, and-“ here he points to his other hand, the left, laden with rings- “make sure to be buried with the jewelry."  


The man laughs at that. “So the Bitch doesn’t get them?”  


Dismas nods, trying hard not to smile. “So the Bitch doesn’t get them.”

_

He remembers, in the dream on Regent Street, where if he waited long enough a ruby would materialize in his pocket and his man would be waiting in the alley off the lefthand lane. There were these Signs.  


He keeps the hamlet’s coin safely on his person – even when he’s got a blacksmith who’s willing and able to stamp them into sovereign, something tells him it’s not what it’s for – one day he’s got it stashed in a secret room of an abandoned manor house, the next it’s gone.  


The palmistry doesn’t make enough for board, but there’s enough for food. He wonders if Reynauld is content to know that he’ll never go hungry again, wonders if that’s all he could bargain for. He’s – he’s grateful.  


When his knees go, there’s a cane – when his eyes go, he figures they’re not important for the “palmistry” anyways – the Crown whispers, tells him what to say but not how to say it, tells men what to look for, insists that they take leave from home to take arms against the unknown – the instructions are not always clear to him, but he understands what he’s doing. He’s setting things in motion. He’d say more if he knew how to stop it.  


The Crown first divulges its own secrets when he feels the ravages of old age, tells him where to find the incenses to burn, tells him how the sage works. Tells him what the yellowing circular in hand says: “Men and Women wanted: Serious soldiers of fortune and practitioners only.”  


There were these Signs.  


He has a seat at the tavern’s bar, far too old to drink – far too old to be taking care of himself – listening to the man adjacent wretch with the drink in hand, who recoils at his presence.  


“Go ahead, laugh.”  


He smiles. Poor boy. How different it was years ago, but now the Crown’s told him. Now he smiles and thinks that just the privilege of seeing Reynauld safe at last was well worth it.  


“There's nothing to laugh about, Dismas Turner."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reynauld is one of the ghosts of the old run, with just enough bargaining power to make Dismas an immortal facet of the heart, just as he is, but realizes that it would make him miserable - so he grants him an extension of his mortality, provided that he spread the influence of the Iron Crown.
> 
> Heavily inspired by [The Myth of Devotion](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/myth-devotion), in which Hades constructs the New Hell for Persephone.
> 
> Special thank you to co-writer Bear for dealing with my awful 'leper as a desperate gay sugar daddy and jester as a ruthless twink au' ass over Discord... ilu Bear!!♡


End file.
